Cyclocross race #2: Mugdock Country Park

Another Sunday, another cyclocross race!

This weekend’s race was at Mugdock Coutry Park, north of Glasgow. The course was similar to last time – switchback ascents, muddy chutes, forest floor mudbaths and open meadows. Mud was every bit as bad as last time, although a slightly different character. Check out my mud connoisseur status.

I had arrived early, but with the race start delayed I passed the time in my car reading a kindle book on my phone. But by the time I got back to the start line there wasn’t enough time to reccy the course. In fact, there was barely enough time to locate where the start line was.

The starting gun went off, which got everyone’s attention, I made good progress up the hill and had a good number of riders behind me before we shuffled through the singletrack. There were three or four riders who suffered mechanicals off the line – I’m confused by that .. we were riding on a straight path?!

Last weekend, I learned that momentum is king in the mud. And so today I carried as much speed as possible into muddy sections – confident that I could handle the slips and slides. It worked great; I passed a few people that way.

Early on, I was following a group of riders but by the end of the first lap, I dropped off the back to ride my own race. I tried to cycle as much as possible – managing the steep chute on all but the last lap, and after a few attempts I figured out how to do the climb after the bridge (again, by carrying maximum momentum off the bridge to clear the initial deep mud). But there was plenty of running and pushing through the worst of the mud.

Towards the end of the race, I could see that I would be passed by the leaders on their bell lap. This suited me just fine! Last week, I’d cleared the line just before the leader and so had to do another lap. This weekend I cycled for 1h2m, compared with 1h15m last weekend.

This also meant that I came into the ‘arena’ following the top three (albeit lapped) and so arrived to roars and cheers and air horns. Woo! That gave me a bit of extra encouragement to push a bit harder on the last few bends. 🙂

I got absolutely caked in mud. I’ve figured why cross racers wear long leggings. It’s not to keep their legs warms. It’s so that they can peel the layers of mud off after the race is finished. My right shoe got a crack in it, and was chock full of mud by the end.

But the mud washes off, and now it’s over I’m pretty pleased with race #2. I learned a bunch of stuff in race #1 and played things better this time out. I’ve no idea where I finished though! Time to compulsively hit reload on the cyclocross website until the results appear.